It is hard to imagine a year has passed since we lost our friend and leader Martin McGuinness.
The scores of thousands who attended his funeral showed a clear outpouring of love and solidarity and the very high esteem in which Martin was held as an active, respected and humble political leader who made a huge difference to ordinary people’s lives.
Martin was an ordinary man, who got involved, organised and led from the front in the transformation of this country as a result of the Irish peace process over the past 25 years.
As Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator Martin took on a huge challenge and responsibility to win the trust and support of the nationalist people and to successfully build a pathway to peace out of conflict and division.
He forged a reputation as a capable and outstanding political negotiator and a people first politician and government minister.
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We saw his political calibre when both he and Ian Paisley entered joint office to restore the power-sharing executive back in May 2007.
Over those ten difficult and testing years, as deputy First Minister, Martin sought with all his energy and determination to serve all the people of the north and the island of Ireland by making the power-sharing government work.
Throughout that time, he worked with Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster as DUP First Ministers and always sought to exercise his responsibilities in good faith and to seek resolutions rather than recrimination.
He worked tirelessly and assertively to defend our peace process, to advance the reconciliation of our community and to build a better future for our youth.
As true leaders do he stretched and challenged his own supporters within republicanism and nationalism in his determination to reach out with an open hand in friendship to our unionist neighbours – to unite Orange and Green.
And it was a source of deep personal frustration for Martin that those efforts were not always reciprocated by political unionism’s leaders who want to hold back change and maintain the status quo, as demonstrated most recently when the DUP collapsed the talks and abandoned the fair and balanced accommodation – the draft agreement – we had reached together.
Martin always believed that the political institutions underpinning the Good Friday Agreement only have value if they enjoy the confidence and support of the people they were established to serve.
They only have meaning if they are delivering fairly for all our people based on the principles of equality and mutual respect on which they were founded.
In his last public appeal, Martin urged people to choose hope over fear — to put equality and respect for all our people at the heart of the power-sharing institutions.
As the Sinn Féin deputy leader I am focusing my energy on the same strategy and vision he had, and which we share.
To achieve reconciliation, to build bridges between our communities and to re-establish power-sharing institutions and equal partnership government which delivers for everyone.
